The feds' dream team to fight diseases

Every year pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars in the hope that their scientists will develop blockbuster drugs to defeat the world's most fearsome diseases. Today these drugs help untold millions of people hold HIV at bay, shrink their tumors, survive life-threatening infections and cut their risks of devastating stroke or heart attack.

But many drugs that look promising in the lab don't work in trials. Or they cause serious side effects. As patients continue to await powerful treatments, researchers lose time, and their employers lose money. The National Institutes of Health says that "developing a new drug - from early discovery through (Food and Drug Administration) approval - takes well over a decade and has a failure rate of more than 95 percent."

Competition to create (and profit from) new drugs is fierce, and rightly so. But what if drug companies pooled their talents and resources to mount coordinated attacks on some of the most pernicious diseases? Could they conquer Alzheimer's disease, just as U.S. ingenuity and engineering put a man on the moon? Could they solve the puzzle of diabetes just as physicists with the Manhattan Project brought forth a war-ending nuclear bomb?

The NIH thinks so. This week it announced an ambitious five-year, $230 million plan: Harness the power of 10 large drug companies and seven nonprofit organizations to accelerate the development of drugs to treat four major predators - Alzheimer's, Type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

The NIH drug-developing dream team will share data and collaborate to determine which findings are most likely to lead to effective treatments. Instead of the usual cloak of secrecy over such efforts, researchers will publish their findings and data for all to see.

Three pragmatic aims: Accelerate progress by sifting through mountains of data more quickly. Shorten the time to deliver effective new medicines. And cut redundant costs.

If this pioneering effort works, it will be expanded to attack other diseases. "We are getting together in a way that has not happened before," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told The New York Times. "We are bringing scientists from different perspectives into the same room. They will leave their egos at the door, leave their affiliations at the door." Or so everyone hopes.

Dr. Mikael Dolsten, president of worldwide research and development at Pfizer, one of the companies involved, told the newspaper that even five years ago, such a team effort could not have been launched. "It was a different time," Dolsten said. "Companies had the view that going alone would be sufficient."

Not anymore. The frenetic pace of major advances in genetic and other technologies can overwhelm scientists. "It is almost like you are traveling in a landscape of biology, but there are no clear signposts of where to go," Dolsten told the Times. "We are wasting resources and time."

The NIH isn't the first to suggest that scientists, notoriously competitive and territorial, cooperate in a search for cures. But we like NIH's chances. The agency isn't just cheerleading. It is chipping in about $119 million in federal research money, matching the drug companies' investments over the five-year program.

That said, the NIH will need to ride herd over these scientists and companies, to make sure they spend wisely and avoid turf wars. That's a big challenge, but arguably less formidable than the actual research.

In recent decades, scientists have made halting, fitful progress against some of the most intractable killers on the planet: cancer, heart disease, stroke. Researchers have raised hopes for new drugs and new treatments that will finally conquer these illnesses. But in each case they face a foe that is cunning and patient, an adversary that can cleverly hide its tracks, camouflage its weapons and attack when least expected.

Pooling drug companies and an army of scientists may or may not produce huge breakthroughs. If this does succeed, the benefits reaped will be measured not merely in dollars, but in lives - potentially millions of lives - improved and saved. The Alzheimer's Foundation of America estimates that the number of Americans afflicted with that disorder - currently about 5 million - will rise as the U.S. population over age 65 grows dramatically. The urgency for treatments, for cures, is self-evident.

Diseases can seem indomitable - until resolute and methodical scientists prove otherwise. Think about polio. Or smallpox. Or diphtheria. Each was tamed by medical innovation.

Let's hope the NIH dream team adds to that list of the vanquished. And soon.